By Abe Villarreal
When you're a kid, you think everything is weird. I had a third-grade teacher, a self-described hippie, who ate raw, whole tomatoes as snacks in between her grammar lessons. I thought that was weird.
Maybe it's because biting a whole tomato, just like if you were eating an apple, is something I never saw in my household. When we were kids, anything we didn't see or learn in our homes struck us as something that didn't make sense.
It's part of our trust in our parents. They know everything and they tell us everything that we should learn. We don't know what they keep from us. Like the fact that middle-aged third-grade teachers can eat raw fruits and veggies just like we eat cookies out of a bag.
I used to think that older people sitting at a McDonalds for long periods of time, not saying much to each other, only sitting there, was just plain weird. Why would they do that? How is that fun?
When you're a kid, everything you do, every minute you spend, should be considered fun. If it's not fun, it's not worth our time.
At some point, I'm not sure when, eating raw tomatoes and spending quiet moments with long-time friends over a cup of coffee becomes golden. Filling up your day this way is more than just fun, it's necessary.
I wish I was a kid again. A kid that would ask questions. That would wonder why people did the things they did. One that would see in others not their weirdness but their differences with interest.
That's what we need more in life. Kids who are interested, not grossed out. Algorithms have them living in a bubble. Whatever they like, the world shows them more of it. They fall in a cycle of self-interest. Of wanting to only be around the familiar. They are too afraid to be uncomfortable.
Maybe it's not just kids. Maybe it's happening to us, too. We only see and hear what reaffirms what we already think we know for sure. We also find weirdness in the unfamiliar. More and more, we are told that other people's differences make them weird. Not like us. Sometimes, not just different, but criminal, or less human.
I hear it all the time in the news and in conversations. People look puzzled and in disbelief that there are "other" people who "don't understand," and "don't see" what is obvious to us. Not understanding goes both ways.
So we have to listen to songs that we've never heard by artists who aren't popular. We have to tell our kids to travel to places that aren't easy to find on a map. To talk to people who speak in ways that are hard to understand. To eat food they can't describe. To sit with people they've never met.
To learn about things that their parents didn't know. To share with them something they once thought unbelievable. All these things are possible if we put aside that there is weirdness out there.
Not that there is anything wrong with being weird. There's always room for weirdness. We just can't be afraid of it.
Abe Villarreal writes about the traditions, people, and culture of America. He can be reached at
